Announcing: Million Dollar Hook Machine

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Today, I would like to announce the Million Dollar Hook Machine. It is a kind of push-button toaster:

You pop in a description of a product or an offer. Out pop a few dozen scientifically crafted, magically inspired hooks you can use to promote your product or offer, whether in emails, ads, sales letter leads, VSLs, advertorials, postcard campaigns, or book titles.

A hook, as you probably know, is the key idea behind an ad or an email or a sales letter lead.

Phrased well, a hook becomes your headline.

Overall, your hook is the thing that’s most responsible for the success or failure of a piece of copy, outside of your offer.

You might think you’re already good at coming up with hooks, or that Claude or ChatGPT can pump out some hooks for you.

Of course. You are good, and they can. But why not do better, and get bigger results than you might get just by yourself, or that your AI generic and untrained minions can generate for you now?

Million Dollar Hook Machine was created by my friend Vasilis Apostolou.

“My friend” is a term very loosely thrown about in affiliate promos (and this is an affiliate promo).

But Vasilis and I actually are friends. I’ve known him for 5+ years. Most of that time I’ve known him online — we used to get on Zoom calls regularly to share industry gossip and talk copywriting. But then we actually roomed together when we both went to an IRL copywriting conference in Poland a few years ago, where we also shared industry gossip and talked copywriting.

That’s to say, Vasilis has my personal trust and endorsement. But do you really care about that? Maybe not. So here are some hard-hitting facts about the man:

1. Vasilis started out at Agora, the biggest direct response publisher out there (billion dollars+ a year, the last I checked). He was trained there using the bloody and brutal Agora copy bootcamps. He ended up training other copywriters, and on this specific topic, hooks.

2. Vasilis is now an in-house copywriter at Advanced Bionutritionals, an 8-figure truly direct response supplement company. When I say “truly direct response,” I mean Advanced Bionutritionals have a suite of doctors as gurus… send out paid print newsletters to customers… and actually produce 40-minute, big-idea VSLs they run on cold traffic. This is not your daddy’s CBD gummies.

3. For the past several years, Vasilis has been directly mentored by the great Parris Lampropoulos. Parris, as you might know, is one of the biggest A-list copywriting names out there. Parris has been in the biz for decades, and has made many tens (or hundreds?) of millions of dollars for others and himself. Over the years, he has mentored a small number of copywriters 1-1. Vasilis is in this small and exclusive group.

4. Vasilis uses the Million Dollar Hook Machine in his own work. This same push-button toaster has been responsible for ads and sales letters that brought in $1M+, hence the creative and accurate name, “Million Dollar Hook Machine.”

Vasilis has just released Million Dollar Hook Machine for the first time ever. He’s running a launch for it until next Monday, with several sexy bonuses that will disappear after the launch.

Possibly the most interesting among these is the Million-Dollar Script Generator, which takes hooks and produces fully-formed ad scripts that you can edit and then test. (Says Vasilis, I’ve seen it produce drafts that are stronger than many scripts written by working copywriters and creative strategists.”)

Just yesterday, I wrote an email with a job advertisement for exactly this kind of work. The fact is, big direct response businesses are hiring right now for copywriters who can come up with good hooks for existing products, and they are paying good money for it.

If this is the kind of work you do or want to do, and you want to be faster and more successful at it, while working less, then Vasilis’s current offer is worth a look, particularly now, with the sexy bonuses attached. Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mdhm

[Copywriting job] YT and Meta video ad scripts

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A couple days ago, I got a message from Igor Kheifets, who runs an 8-figure email business in the business opportunity space.

(I’ve known Igor for 5+ years, and he’s been in business for much longer. I’ve spoken inside his mastermind. I’ve participated in his JV mixers. I’ve invited him inside my own invite-only community of list owners.)

I had just connected Igor with a potential business partner. Never satisfied, Igor wanted more. He wrote:

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I come with another ask :/

Where do I go to hire a GOOD copywriter these days?

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I have no idea where copywriters hang out these days, but I told Igor I have a list with a bunch of copywriters on it. I offered him to send out an email about it. I asked what kinds of copy he is looking for. The answer:

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I am looking for a copywriter who can write meta and YouTube video as scripts for a biz opp education company. The offers are books and webinars.

Thing about writing ads for biz opp (or any highly competitive sector) is that you gotta find new ways to talk about old ideas. That would be the primary focus.

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So there you go:

If you are a GOOD copywriter… if you’re looking to work with a big and long-running direct outfit like Igor’s… if you can come up with exciting new ways to talk about familiar old ideas… then do 10 minutes of research on Igor and his business, and figure out if you are qualified to write for him, and if you would love to do so.

If you find the answer to both questions is yes, then write Igor at igorsoloadsltd@gmail.com and make your pitch.

What good will that do you?

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A new subscriber wrote in yesterday to ask:

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How would you start over if you’d lost everything right now? Including your friends and connections that you acquired over the years, only you, your knowledge and your skill.

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I paused at this, because I had recently been thinking about the same question, for my own reasons.

For a moment, I considered writing up my thoughts, and sharing them in an email. But then I asked myself, why?

What good will it do you to know what I would do if I lost everything but MY knowledge, MY skill, and MY good looks?

The fact is, my knowledge (of stuff like marketing principles and tactics) and my skill (in things like copywriting) took years to develop.

The same is true of my mindset, if by that we mean my ability to choose projects… to drive them to the end even when I’m feeling uncertain and dispirited… to tweak my approach and try again when I lay an egg… and to recognize when it’s time to cut my losses and move on.

Because of all this, it would be useless for me to tell you what I would do, unless you have my knowledge and skills and mindset.

(It would also be close to useless if you do have my knowledge and skills and mindset, because in that case you’re prolly not thinking of getting rid of everything you’ve got and starting from zero.)

Here are a few things I think are worth doing in general:

– Selling

– Writing

– Having an audience and maintaining a good relationship with that audience

If you do all three of these on a decent level — not “world class” level, not “so good they can’t ignore you,” simply decent — you will have work and money, as long as work and money are to be had.

Now please just give me a second. Let me go to my closet and dig it out… ah yes, here it is. My favorite hobby horse:

Daily emails.

The fact is, writing a daily email will, bit by bit, get you better at selling, at writing, and in time, even if you do absolutely nothing else, it will build up a small but dedicated audience for you (that’s how it happened for me at least).

Where daily emails will eventually take you, nobody knows. But I’m willing to bet it will be a good destination, better than where you’re at now. Plus, you might even enjoy the journey along the way.

If you want help starting and sticking with the habit of writing daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

10 things people have copied from me

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1. My “Hello my name is” optin page. (A copywriter I know recently set up a new list and wrote to tell me about it, along with, “I swiped your landing page”)

2. “Announcing” as the subject line to kick off every promo or new offer

3. “Down payment + the rest contingent on success” pricing plans

4. Turning my own current project into a mid-ticket cohort I can sell (I did it with my project of implementing the 1-Person Advertorial Agency program back in May, several people have followed me since)

5. The Most Valuable Email trick (ok, I created a course on that, so little wonder)

6. Using the “Can you do me a favor?” strategy in emails

7. “Bejakovic’s crooked line” (a specific storytelling technique I used in advertorials, which Sam Bradbury-Butler used in his own advertorials and then integrated in his 1-Person Advertorial Agency program, while naming it after me)

8. My personal journaling and notetaking system (ok, I created a course on that too, called Insight Exposed, so little wonder again)

9. “Magic box” CTAs (if you don’t know what those are, then reply and ask)

10. My opening line of copy in emails where the subject line and the body don’t match (you gotta create a bridge)

There’s more, too. I’m possibly the most ripped-off daily emailer south of the Seine and north of the Nile.

Am I bitter about this? You bet your sweet—

No, I’m not bitter. The fact is, few if any of the above ideas are actually mine.

My optin page copy is taken from William Goldman’s Princess Bride. The “announcing” subject line I got from Sean D’Souza who got it from Vic Schwab. The “down payment + rest contingent on success” I picked up from Jeff Walker.

And so on.

All these 10 things people have copied from me I have copied from others as well, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Frankly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Yes, it can be fun to buy and sell secrets and secret opportunities, and that’s part of the game of direct response, both for the customers and the merchants.

At the same time, good ideas are cheap and abundant. You have to apply them, and keep applying them, and not get too distracted by the shiny and the new, in order to achieve success.

The good news is, if you apply and keep applying, success comes. It might take a while, but it comes.

Perhaps you KNOW the value of writing daily emails. Perhaps you even KNOW how to write daily emails.

But in case you’re not actually writing daily emails regularly, and applying that knowledge, I have a service that can help motivate you, keep you accountable, and make your job easier.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Budapest, Hopkins, cold outreach

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Three mildly connected things for you today, to pick and choose from as you like:

#1. Budapest

I’m just finishing my visit to my former home town, Budapest, where I spent 11 years of my life. I reconnected with friends I’ve known for decades. The weather was perfect. The city was more beautiful than ever. All in all it was a great trip.

One thing that stood out during this trip:

Hungary, of which Budapest is the capital and by far the biggest town, had a big change of government earlier this year. The political party that had ruled for 16 years, and that had become infamous for corruption and undemocratic consolidation of power, finally lost the elections.

Ever since, foreign investment that had been frozen and kept out of the country has started flowing back in… Hungarians who had moved abroad, because they found the local situation hopeless, have been moving back… and the locals here just look optimistic and happy (ok, as happy as Hungarians can ever look).

This brings me to…

#2. Claude Hopkins

Claude Hopkins, author of Scientific Advertising, which is a sort of Bible in the field of direct advertising, once wrote:

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“People are like sheep. They cannot judge values, nor can you and I. We judge things largely by others’ impressions, by popular favor. We go with the crowd. So the most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked. People follow styles and preferences. We rarely decide for ourselves, because we don’t know the facts. But when we see the crowds taking any certain direction, we are much inclined to go with them.”

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Hopkins was talking about advertising, about picking and choosing products to sell and copy to run based on the trend of the crowd. Sure. But the idea applies more broadly.

The most effective thing in business, and maybe in life, is the trend of the crowd.

Yes, it’s possible to get rich and be happy during depressions and wars.

But a much more effective way to get rich and be happy is to work in industries and live in places that are going through periods of growth or rebirth of expansion. I thought of this during this trip to Budapest.

I hadn’t seriously considered moving back here ever since I had moved away almost 8 years ago. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, because of the trend of the crowd. I feel like this will be a place of excitement and growth over the coming years.

#3. Cold outreach

Yesterday I sent out an email to my list, asking folks if they’ve tried getting clients via cold outreach.

I got two classes of responses. Class 1:

1A. “Yes, I hate it. I hired an agency multiple times and every time I hated it.”

1B. “So far, 17 days in, 70 prospects approached, 0 clients, countless menty b’s.”

1C. “No, and wouldn’t ;)”

Then there’s class 2:

2A. “That is my primary method for getting clients.”

2B. “Yes, John. Works very well for me. No fancy cold email stack. Just a 3-liner email with a very relevant problem that they’d wanna get rid of. Brings me every month $12K to $18K!”

2C. “I’m using cold outreach to get clients, and I’m doing very well with it. Personally, one of the best methods, especially if we are talking about cold email outreach.”

Quite the difference between Class 1 and Class 2.

I started a discussion about this in my Daily Email House community.

If cold outreach is not something you hate or are fundamentally opposed to, you can join in the discussion below.

It’s an opportunity to share your experiences, and maybe learn from the experiences of some people who have been very successful with cold outreach. Here’s the link:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/cold-outreach

Why yes, that would be a dumb idea

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I got an email yesterday from someone I don’t know, with the subject line, “Copy Riddles.”

Copy Riddles is the name of my highest-ticket info product.

Ok, attention engaged. I opened the email to read:

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John,

A daily newsletter peers call the most underrated list in copywriting, built up around Copy Riddles, is a base worth working with.

My hunch is there’s a five figure opportunity in readers who’ve never been pointed at Copy Riddles outside of a launch window.

I fund and run that kind of campaign myself. I do the work, you spend nothing upfront, and I only earn a share of what converts.

Would it be a dumb idea to grab 15 minutes and see if there’s a test worth running there?

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Why yes, that would be a dumb idea, and a waste of a perfectly good 15 minutes.

Ignore for the moment the strange English in this cold email, which makes me doubt this person can write in a way that would get people to buy.

The reason it would be a dumb idea is that I already regularly promote Copy Riddles “outside of a launch window,” and I have been for years.

I do it both inside one-off daily emails like this one, and during promos where I create a special offer around Copy Riddles, attach it to a deadline, and make a bit of a spectacle to reap all the demand that my daily emails may have sown.

Two minutes of research could have told my cold emailer all that.

Oh well. This guy’s dumb idea did serve two purposes:

1. To allow me to remind you to keep promoting your products regularly via daily emails, so you can create demand, and to run regular promos, so you can cash in on that demand, and

2. To allow me to point you to my Copy Riddles program, which is the best thing I sell.

For more information on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Why I won’t promote your paid community

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Yesterday, I promoted Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, a paid community. A reader who also has a paid community wrote in to ask:

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Ronin is $111/mo. Mine is [a similar price]. If I invite you to be a lifetime member and provided you like what I’ve built inside, would you consider promoting it?

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I appreciate the offer, and the answer is, I would not consider promoting this dude’s paid community, or really, anybody else’s paid community.

The fact is, it’s close to impossible to promote somebody else’s paid community with any success. Because of this, the promise of money isn’t much of a promise at all. I only keep promoting Travis’s thing because I’m a true believer, because I’m in the community myself and get a lot out of it.

If I did promote somebody else’s paid community primarily because I was hoping to get paid, I would do it the way Travis is preparing to auction off a recurring affiliate offer now inside Royalty Ronin.

Travis will be offering people a “Hero Package,” which provides a sexy outcome and overcomes all or most of the objections people might have when they are promised that outcome.

He’s gonna sell that Hero Package, rather than the continuity offer. He will make the continuity offer simply the condition for getting what people really want.

Of course, this model is well-known.

The magic is the way that Travis puts together his Hero Packages so that people are willing to pay 5x, 10x, 20x of whatever the underlying subscription might cost.

If you would like to observe Travis in action as he does this, and learn something you can use to promote recurring offers, whether your own or from affiliates:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Creating value out of things that others would never think of

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I’m at the airport as I write this, on my way to Budapest, my former home, for a reunion with friends I had when I lived there a long time ago.

Right now, I’m sitting on a tiny stool at an airport restaurant, about to bite into a refrigerated airport sandwich, crowded on the one side by a pushy French couple and on the other by cleaning woman with a large broom.

That’s the good part of my current trip.

The bad part is that I just spent 25 minutes waiting in line for the privilege of paying 48 euro to get my boarding pass.

I’m flying low-cost, and I didn’t check in online before the three-hours deadline mandated by this low-cost airline. When I tried to check in online a few hours ago, I was told I would have to do it at the airport, and pay.

It’s annoying when this happens on a low-cost flight, and yet it is instructive.

The fact is, all kinds of things can be turned into value that normally aren’t.

It feels petty when low-cost airlines do it, but it can be done in ways that don’t feel petty, but in fact feel the opposite — generous, exciting, convenient.

Imagine you’re buying a house.

Nominally, you’re paying for the keys and the right to move in.

You can buy a “low-cost” house, which gives you the keys and the right to move in, but which doesn’t have lightbulbs, windows, or running water, and you have to pay extra for those.

Conversely, can buy a “premium” house, which gives you not just the bare keys and the right to move in, but which has been furnished by an interior designer, comes with a concierged security service, and has a fridge stocked with food from Whole Foods.

Ultimately, it’s the same business practice, the only difference is the positioning of your business as upmarket or downmarket.

Maybe you’re munching on your own refrigerated sandwich right now and mumbling, “Right right…”

… but maybe you don’t see how this idea from real estate and the airline industry can apply to what you do, specifically to creating offers that you can sell to your audience.

For that, I’d like to invite you to sign up for a trial to my perennial recommendation, the Royalty Ronin community.

Travis Sago, the guy who runs Ronin, is the best person I have ever seen at creating value out of things that others would never think of.

Right now, Travis is preparing to auction off a year of a SaaS, which he is promoting as an affiliate.

In other words, Travis will ask people how much they would pay… to have him pay their bill for a year of this software service.

How do you possibly auction off something not unique, with a known and fixed value? And how do you auction it off for 5x, 10x, 20x of what it is currently selling for on the website of the SaaS company?

For that, I invite you to sign up to Ronin, and to follow along as Travis proceeds to build up his premium offer, out of elements that might seem like air to you right now:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Father devastated by 9yo son’s lack of monetization

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Have you heard the latest news about the “devastated father who says his 9-year-old son spent $118k on YouTube ads?”

The story broke yesterday. The events apparently happened over the past month. The background:

1. Last year, the kid started a YouTube channel streaming himself playing Minecraft, called Mighty Mike Plays.

2. Ever since, Mighty Mike uploaded a bunch of videos, but he wasn’t getting any views. He complained to dad.

3. Dad had a bright idea, and guided his son through a small $20 ad campaign to get some YouTube views.

4. Dad used his company card to fund this (it’s hard to tell if the dad is a moron or a criminal, and the article I read doesn’t say).

5. A few days ago, dad got called into his boss’s office. “What is this series of charges on the company card, totaling $118k?”

6. Turns out the Mighty Mike had kept running ads on YouTube, using dad’s company card, to the tune of $118k.

7. Two days ago, Mighty Mike posted on YouTube, “I’m in big trouble.”

8. Yesterday, Mike’s dad posted a video on the Mighty Mike Plays channel, explaining how it all went down. He also says it is yet not sure if he will be able to will keep his job or if he will have to repay the money. (Like I said, it’s not clear if he’s a moron or a criminal.)

Assuming that this isn’t just all made up by AI or by clickfarming scammers in some far-off land, it’s a wild story.

The best part is that I went to check the Mighty Mike Plays channel.

It currently stands at 39k subs, meaning that Mike apparently paid about $3 per YouTube subscriber.

I also checked the channel’s videos. The the top few videos are in the 200k views range, and the rest steeply drop off.

Adding it all up, I figure that Mighty Mike’s Minecraft streams didn’t get more than 1M views in total.

I’m not sure if Mike could monetize his channel (I’m guessing not, since he’s a minor, but I don’t know YouTube).

If he could, then according to my AI monkey’s best estimates, his 1M YouTube views, resulting from his $118k ad spend, would have netted him between $2k and $5k.

My takeaway for you is simply, if you think a bigger audience will solve all your problems, it won’t.

That’s not to say that you don’t need a certain size of audience to make a certain amount of money.

But you also need ways to monetize that audience.

Earlier today, I prepared a list of 10 ways to better monetize an email list of 3k+ subscribers. This list is based on things I’ve personally done to monetize my list, and the work I’ve done with consulting clients who I’ve helped to make more money from their email list.

This list won’t be useful to you if you don’t have a list of at least 3k subscribers. If you do, and if you’d like the list, hit reply and I’ll get it to you.